Why is it so important to teach coding to children?

While not every child is destined to be a programmer, coding is increasing as an important skill in school curriculums around the world. While some education traditionalists have resisted this change, it’s inevitable that coding languages will becomes commonplace in tomorrow’s classrooms.

geralt/pixabay

At the basic level, coding is the act by which we instruct computers to do things with coding languages. There are several different coding languages that have changed and developed over the years, but they all share fundamental principles.

But why is coding considered more and more important? Let’s take a look at some of the biggest reasons people are advocating that children learn to code.

It’s a technological world

Our modern world is littered with technology and this is only going to increase over the decades. All computer driven devices, from phones to GPS systems, rely on a coding language at their core.

Pexels/pixabay

However, many people take for granted the technology they use every day and would have no idea how to build it from scratch. While many people know how to use a computer, far less understand how they work from the inside out.

The future of jobs

As technology becomes more prevalent throughout society, more services will become automated. This means that companies can save money by using robots for manual tasks instead of paid employees.

This paradigm shift in the global workforce will mean the need for people who can design and build automated systems will increase. An understanding of coding language will be one of the most important points on future resumes.

This fear of the changing workforce is part of what has prompted so many parents to push for coding education in schools. Nobody wants their children to graduate with skills that aren’t in commercial demand.

Currently, the IT industry is expanding rapidly and is creating more jobs then there are qualified people to fill them. This has put pressure on society to produce a new generation of code-savvy students to fill this gap in the workforce.

While many adults will attempt to re-educate themselves so that they can take coding jobs, many people are put off by learning to code. Therefore it’s important that coding is normalised in school classrooms so that more children are exposed to it and have a basic understanding of how it works.

Problem solving

Coding isn’t necessarily as hard as it seems. The majority of coding work is actually the act of fixing errors, a process known as debugging.

The act of testing code, identifying problems and finding solutions to them is a useful skill not only in IT but in everyday life. It teaches children the basic philosophy behind troubleshooting and optimising workflows.